TWO families have won groundbreaking legal claims to compensation for their Merseyside relatives’ exposure to asbestos.

In separate cases, relatives of Huyton mother-of-two Dianne Willmore and Eastham-based Enid Costello were awarded damages after convincing courts their deaths were related to “low level” asbestos exposure.

Last night, legal experts said the Supreme Court ruling could pave the way for similar claims nationwide.

Mrs Willmore, 49, was awarded £240,000 damages after convincing a High Court judge in July, 2009, that her time as a pupil at the former Bowring Comprehensive School, in Huyton, caused her incurable lung cancer.

Knowsley council took the terminally-ill former supermarket worker to London’s Civil Appeal Court, arguing it was not “reasonably practicable” to protect her from asbestos exposure.

But, in October, 2009, Mrs Willmore finally looked to have won her battle when Lord Justice Sedley backed the original decision.

However, she died the following day after Knowsley council said it was weighing up a fresh court bid to overturn the decision.

Eastham-based Mrs Costello fell victim to mesothelioma and died, aged 74, in 2006.

She was said to have breathed in dust containing asbestos when she was a secretary at a Ellesmere packaging factory owned by Van Leer UK, between 1966 and 1984.

In the appeal court, her daughter, Karen Sienkiewicz, won the right to damages from former employer Greif, to be set at a later date.